Tuesday, 29 June 2010

My town is totally unfamiliar to me. The Pizza Hut where my busboy friends stole pies for our drunken parties is now an Indian sweets shop with a completely inappropriate roof. The A&P I shoplifted from is now an Indian grocery. The multiplex where we snuck into R-rated movies now shows only Bollywood films and serves samosas. The Italian restaurant that my friends stole cash from as waiters is now Moghul, one of the most famous Indian restaurants in the country. There is an entire generation of white children in Edison who have nowhere to learn crime.[...}

After the law passed, when I was a kid, a few engineers and doctors from Gujarat moved to Edison because of its proximity to AT&T, good schools and reasonably priced, if slightly deteriorating, post–WW II housing. For a while, we assumed all Indians were geniuses. Then, in the 1980s, the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins, and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing. In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor.

Unlike some of my friends in the 1980s, I liked a lot of things about the way my town changed: far better restaurants, friends dorky enough to play Dungeons & Dragons with me, restaurant owners who didn't card us because all white people look old. But sometime after I left, the town became a maze of charmless Indian strip malls and housing developments. Whenever I go back, I feel what people in Arizona talk about: a sense of loss and anomie and disbelief that anyone can eat food that spicy.[...]

Unlike previous waves of immigrants, who couldn't fly home or Skype with relatives, Edison's first Indian generation didn't quickly assimilate (and give their kids Western names). But if you look at the current Facebook photos of students at my old high school, J.P. Stevens, which would be very creepy of you, you'll see that, while the population seems at least half Indian, a lot of them look like the Italian Guidos I grew up with in the 1980s: gold chains, gelled hair, unbuttoned shirts. In fact, they are called Guindians. Their assimilation is so wonderfully American that if the Statue of Liberty could shed a tear, she would. Because of the amount of cologne they wear.

Heh, heh. Guindians.

I laughed when I read this becuase it is so damn true. What's even funnier is that it is published in Time, an allegedly progressive, left of center current affairs magazine.

Instead of Edison, New Jersey you can substitute the place for any city in a western (typically English speaking) nation where Indians have amassed. Like Brampton, Ontario and Malton just to the south of it or Surrey, British Columbia.

Traveling north through Malton up to Brampton you are met but a seemingly endless vista of charmless housing developments populated by Indians that provide business to equally charmless Indian strip malls. Traveling north you pass through industrial parks into banal urban sprawl Brampton whose Indian inhabitants haven't enriched the area with their culture but robbed it of its once rural charm with their contribution to rapid population growth and demand for cheap single family housing. I don't know about Edison, New Jersey but there is enough Indo-Canadian criminals in Canada (or fashionable pseudo-criminals who listen to banghra instead of hip-hop) that can teach a white kid a thing or two.

Joking aside, the article does bring to light the pressing problem of family reunification and how it is more burdensome then beneficial. The Indian "geniuses" entered the United States as skilled immigrants and did well for themselves. The imported family members did not which contributed to what the writer perceived as a dumbing down effect. It is an over exaggerated racial stereotype to ascribe high intelligence to south Asians, an exaggeration they are not willing to dispel. It is true that they do well in school but for every "genius" there are more than enough of average intelligence, even idiots, to go around. They are typically no smarter or dumber than the next guy.

Also important is the sense of loss the writer is expressing. The loss he is lamenting is not one brought about by progress but by the destruction of what he remembered by the mass settlement of an un-assimilating immigrant group. If this is what is meant by cultural enrichment and multiculturalism then I don't think many Canadians want any of it.

It appears applying to come to Canada as a skilled immigrant has become a little more difficult. Read it here.

The federal government has put a cap of 20,000 on the number of visa applications it will review from skilled immigrants over the next 12 months and also has reduced the number of occupations under which foreign workers can apply.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says the changes, which are effective immediately, were needed to avoid creating new backlogs and processing times under the foreign worker program. In the first quarter of this year alone, there were more than 33,000 applications, according to government figures.

The applications will be accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis. The caps, to last until June 30, 2011, do not apply to foreign workers with a job offer in hand.

It is interesting to see which occupations were cut and which were added to the list.

In revamping the system, the government cut nine occupations from the original list of 38. It removed 20 occupations from the original list, kept 18 and added 11 new ones.

Financial managers, university professors, mining engineers and occupational therapists are among those cut from the list, while architects, dentists, pharmacists and social workers are among the occupations added to the list.

The government also tightened its language requirements, saying applicants must submit proof from a designated independent tester that they are proficient in one of Canada's two official languages. Under the old rules, applicants had the option of proving their language ability in a written submission.

Social workers? Really!? And dentists? In the part of Toronto were I live you cannot throw a rock without hitting a dentist's office.

In any case, I wonder if this will have any effect on the character of immigration inflows. What I mean by this is will certain countries (India and China) see a reduction in the number of people they export to Canada. I've noticed that some of the occupations cut from the list are ones, I imagine, that allow many Indian and Chinese immigrants to come to Canada whereas those added to the list do not. This isn't to say that there are no Indian or Chinese architects but I think it is safe to assume that there are far more Indian and Chinese financial planners or professors coming to Canada than architects.

These cuts to the skilled immigrant category and stricter language proficiency requirements reinforces what I have been saying all along: Canada is brining in too many immigrants. If the skilled category is providing an over supply of labour to Canada then what does it say about the other immigrants who come to Canada? Are we still going to see 250,000+ immigrants a year or is this among the first few steps to bringing the numbers down and regaining control of the system? Is family reunification on Jason Kenney's radar screen? I hope so.

Monday, 28 June 2010

Let's just admit this and get on with life. Vancouver is a colony of China and to a greater extent, all of Asia. The city is often described as North America's first Asian city which is remarkable since I don't think anyone would have considered saying so around 30 years ago.

Mainland Chinese interest in Metro Vancouver property is so strong that it's fuelling a market for real estate tourism, with groups of wealthy travellers scheduling visits to the city for the sole purpose of house hunting.

This is not uncharacteristic of the wealthy who buy property globally. But this isn't the story of a wealthy American buying land in the French countryside. This is about a considerable amount of land being purchased by people of a particular nationality, in this case China. According to the story it is common for 90% of interested buyers to be from mainland China. These are people who are not even Canadian citizens but have displayed an interest in Vancouver's high end real estate market.

I don't know why they are considering buying a second home in Vancouver when they are not even Canadian citizens yet I get the feeling that to these Chinese house hunters Canadian citizenship is a given.

Scarrow said he is aware of other such trips that have been arranged in the past, and when the Mainland Chinese visitors do not have their immigration status in Canada sorted out, they are more reluctant to buy homes.

The trips, he added, are more a chance to get a "lay of the land" for what Metro Vancouver's neighbourhoods are like and what types of homes are available before securing landed immigrant status.

To date, Scarrow said, the preference for Mainland Chinese emigrating to Canada have ranged from Coal Harbour condominiums to single-family homes in Vancouver's leafier enclaves of Shaughnessy, Dunbar and Point Grey.

Vincent Chen, a representative for the Chinese immigration consulting firm Visas Consulting Group, said Canada is presently the most popular destination for Mainland Chinese using his firm. They are attracted by its quality of education, quality of life, the safety and stability of Canadian society and its "attractive investor immigrant program."

The ""attractive investor immigrant program" is nothing but citizenship for sale. It's a sham introducing sham Canadians into the country. It works something like this. You promise to invest so much in the country, produce a least one job, and TA DA, instant Canadian.

Ever wonder why so many groceries and corner stores are owned and operated by Asians? Now you know. It's a joke really. These wealthy mainland Chinese can purchase a Tim Hortens franchise. Then they can sell their share in the business if they so wish, take a loss perhaps, but in the end they get Canadian citizenship on the cheap. And what a bargain. With it you get socialized medicine, a subsidized education for your children, and social services for your aged parents. Then you can go back to China to evade Canada's tax regime because Canada allows dual citizenship (whereas China does not).

Vancouver is a choice destination because un-assimilating Asian immigrants have turned it into a virtual Chinese colony. So are they really immigrating to Canada or to a Chinese colony on the North American continent?

This is a problem. They are creating a city that has more in common with Beijing then the rest of Canada and in turn can transform British Columbia into a Quebec of the west coast.

If Honk Kong immigrants taught us anything these wealthy mainland Chinese will be sham Canadians were they to immigrate to Canada. They should be discouraged from immigrating here. They are not interested in Canada or Canadians only in how they can capitalize off of Canadian society. They are already wealthy and they are not coming here in search of a better life. We don't need them or want them. Some reasonable solutions is to make residency requirements more demanding. The other is to tax overseas incomes of Canadians.

As soon as I read that Canada's population reached 34 million I instantly felt my standard of living and quality of life jumped through the roof. Why wouldn't it? Aren't we told that Canada needs a large population in order to maintain and increase our standard of living? Aren't we better off than when Canada's population was 25 million?

For those in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, how's that morning commute?

And last I checked the collective IQ of Canada's environmentalists is still around a zero.

To Richard Kurland, the Vancouver-based immigration lawyer who dug it up, the document confirmed “what everybody in the business has known for a long time.” For years, the government has been gathering data on the performance of newcomers and their children based on ethnicity, he notes, and while immigration officials deny they use information to identify the best countries from which to recruit, the numbers tell a different story. Since 1999, China and India have been the top two source countries for immigrants to Canada, averaging about 60,000 landings per year, while the number coming from the Caribbean has fallen sharply. Immigration from the West Indies had fallen 45 per cent below levels seen in the early 1990s, according to figures compiled by Statistics Canada, when more than 16,000 from that region were entering the country annually.

Volume of applications is the main reason India and China occupy the number one and number two spots respectively for source countries of immigrants to Canada. They are the two most populous countries so it should be expected that applications to immigrate from India and China should swamp all others.

The article suggests that the favouritism is more economically practical.

Prosaically titled “Social and Economic Outcomes of Second Generation Youth,” the four-page memo showed little regard for the political correctness typical of government correspondence. “Chinese and South Asians are the most likely to have university degrees or higher, and to be employed in high-skilled occupations,” observed the summary, which was prepared by departmental bureaucrats and released recently through access to information. Second-generation youth of Caribbean and Latin American origin don’t fare so well, the memo went on; they tend to obtain lower levels of education than native-born Canadian kids and wind up in less skilled jobs.

That may be true but how many IT specialists from South Asia or China does Canada need when Canada it expecting a shortfall of tradespeople in the foreseeable future? What advantage is there to favouring South Asian or Chinese immigrants given their aversion to manual labour? How many Asians, be they immigrants or Canadian born, do you see working at a construction site, infrastructure project, or renovating a home?

Asian immigrants may posses advanced degrees but that accounts for little in a Canadian labour market flooded with advanced degrees. Their Canadian born children may go on to university and pursue professional occupations but so what? Canadians do that anyways and the jobs they go on to fill would have been filled were they not born here at all.

The memo the article refers to displays its class bias. It assumes that an immigrant with a university degree is preferable to one who is a tradesman but that is not true. Too much of one and little of the other creates an imbalance and that is what we have in Canada. The Canadian labour market has more people with a university education, be they Canadian born or immigrant, then it knows what to do with. That's why immigrants are having a hard time finding work in their field, if they do at all, upon arriving in Canada. Potential employers feel comfortable enough to wait out hiring someone until the right applicant comes along. They are not as desperate as they make themselves out to be. The only labour they are desperate for is cheap labour and that's where immigration comes along.

The memo stresses that the children of South Asian and Chinese immigrants do well in school and go on to university whereas children of Caribbean or Latin American immigrants do not fare so well. This makes it sound worse than it is. Many Caribbean and Latin American immigrants are employed in trade work as well as European immigrants. Taking Portuguese immigrants as an example they are well represented in construction work yet their children have one of the highest high-school drop out rates in Toronto. The likely explanation for this is that they have chosen to follow their parents and take up a trade and see little use for continuing high school. I don't encourage leaving high school early but in the end they do satisfy an economic need.

So the issue is not as clear cut. Higher education has its benefits but do we need more electrical engineers or more electricians?

Is the government playing favourites? Of course it is though it will not admit it.

It would be simplistic to call this profiling. China and India are better represented in Canada’s intake statistics, a senior government official told Maclean’s, because they are rich in skilled, educated people willing to emigrate—not because of ethnic traits, real or imagined: “It’s a matter of basic supply and demand.” As for the memo, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada would say only that it reflects the department’s ongoing concern for groups “experiencing less positive outcomes from an immigration, settlement and a multiculturalism perspective.”

Don't believe it. Were it true then why does Canada have the only diplomatic mission in Chandigarh, the capital city of the Indian state of Punjab, home to the majority of India's Sikhs? Why did the Liberal party of Canada open the mission if not to reward its Sikhs voters who, incidentally, constitute half of the Indo-Canadian community? When half of all applicants are rejected at the mission (that's officially, some say the rejection rate is 80% even 90%) what purpose does it serve other than to funnel the relatives of Sikh Canadians into Canada? And what is the Conservative government doing about the mission?

Indo-Canadians and Chinese-Canadians are two of the largest voting blocs in the country. Politics has everything to do with it. Imagine the backlash if Canada decided to cut its immigrant intake from those two countries. Indeed, this is what happened when the Chretian government tried to increase the pass score for an immigration application. A lawsuit was threatened by those who failed at the higher score but passed at the lower score pressuring the then Liberal government into scraping the whole idea.

Selective or not Canada accepts too many immigrants no matter where they come from. Even if all of Canada's immigrants came from Europe, too many is still too many. It's the reason why immigrants to Canada are experiencing the following:

Despite the new emphasis on economic immigration, a StatsCan study released in February showed that less than one in four newcomers are finding work in the occupations they’d trained for, while immigrants in general are less likely to be employed than native-born Canadians. It is now trite for politicians to bemoan the professional barriers stopping skilled workers from finding jobs in their field—the proverbial cab driver with a Ph.D. But little has been done to remedy the problem.

Thursday, 24 June 2010

Stephen Harper is apologizing again this time to the Hindu community on behalf of Canada as if the Air India disaster is Canada's fault. It is actually but not in the way it is being spun. Yes, the apology is political. It is being made with the hope that it will win Hindu bloc-votes in urban ridings to help the Conservatives get that elusive majority come next election. To think otherwise is an expression of naiveté.

The Air India tragedy was the result of a conflict that erupted between two Indian religious cultures, in this case between Hindus and Sikhs, that made its way to Canadian soil. If anything they should be apologizing to Canadians for exporting their war here. But the real tragedy here is the culturally empty social policy of multiculturalism. If an apology is to be made it is for this farce of a national identity that is being shoved down the throats of Canadians.

Multiculturalism is what hinders people from fully assimilating into Canadian society and being fully accepted by the host majority. And immigrant communities have themselves to blame. Multiculturalism allows them to have their cake and eat it too because they can be Canadian and not Canadian at the same time. And sure enough they eat their cake. When it comes to the Indo-Canadian community they are Indian [and non-resident Indian (NRI), and person of Indian origin (PIO), and "desi"] and Canadian at the same time. This means that they are Indian when it suits them and Canadian when it benefits them.

We are constantly told that those who died in the Air Indian tragedy were Canadians who, I will add, come from a community that spends a good amount of its time in Canada telling and showing everyone they are Indian. So it confuses me why they get upset when they accuse Canadians of failing to see past the Indian identity of the victims and their families, and by extension the entire Indo-Canadian community, and accept them as being Canadian.

This is the real tragedy here and this is the reason why it is Canada's fault. Multiculturalism failed to erase the barriers that prevented the Air India bombers from seeing anyone else but Indian Hindus. They did not see fellow Canadians and to a greater extent neither did anyone else. This is multiculturalism's fruits and this is what Stephen Harper should be apologizing for.

Tuesday, 22 June 2010

The leader of a violent Toronto street gang has been deported to Sri Lanka, six years after he was first ordered out of Canada for his crimes. Canada Border Services Agency officers escorted Jothiravi Sittampalam, pictured, back to his homeland on June 10 but federal officials only confirmed the removal yesterday.The convicted drug dealer was the boss of AK Kannan, an ethnic Tamil gang whose estimated 300 members waged a wild turf war against the rival VVT gang. At least three bystanders were killed in drive-by shootings and other violent acts by the gangs. Sittampalam began trafficking heroin shortly after arriving in Canada in 1990 as a refugee from the Sri Lankan Conflict.

Note how he entered Canada as a "refugee". If Canada caught on early that most Sri Lankan Tamils filing refugee claims were bogus this gangster may never have set foot on Canadian soil. Now Toronto has a Sri Lankan Tamil street gang problem thanks to our gullibility.

At least 25 of the 76 men who arrived in B.C. aboard the Ocean Lady migrant ship last October were members of the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group outlawed in Canada, according to an internal government report obtained by The Vancouver Sun.

Indeed, the Canada Border Services Agency report, marked “secret,” raises the possibility the ship’s entire journey to Canada might have been financed and organized by the Tigers to help settle surviving militants abroad following its crushing military defeat by the Sri Lankan government last year.

Just 25? How about all 76? Furthermore:

“Movement of a large number of high-value combatants and intelligence officers aboard the Ocean Lady may be part of an effort by surviving members of the group to reconstitute from a base of operations overseas in order to renew resistance to ... Sri Lanka,” states the report, obtained by The Sun through the Access to Information Act.[...]

“If these men chose to work in unison they could easily form a formidable LTTE presence in Canada,” it states. “If the overseas wing’s intention is to regroup what is left of its Sri Lanka-based operation in Canada ... these men clearly have the requisite abilities and experience required to move that process along."[...]

“Free passage to a refugee receiving country is exactly the kind of material benefit the group extended to its fighters in return for unquestioning loyalty to the movement,” the report states.

It appears the LTTE want to make Canada the home base of their government in exile.

Though it is most probable that the 76 men are all LTTE militants, possibly high ranking officials, I doubt they will be deported even though they should be. I doubt any of them will be productive members of Canadian society and will likely engage in gang activity and narco-trafficking. After all, traces of cocaine and heroine were found on the clothes of some of the men.

The LTTE is an organization of street thugs that exploited ethnic grievances to seize power. They brought a civil war to Sri Lanka that resulted in the death of tens of thousands of people because violence is the only way they know how to resolve differences. And it looks like Canada wants to reward them with refuge and citizenship even though none of them deserve it.

Prapaharan Thambithurai, 46, is the first person convicted under Canada's anti-terrorism legislation for knowingly raising money to benefit a terrorist group.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Powers said Thambithurai would be able to serve the sentence in Ontario.

The Maple, Ont., resident was arrested in New Westminster, B.C., in March 2008 and charged with providing money, property or services to a terrorist group, in this case the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a banned organization under Canadian law.

The aspirin to these incessant headaches is to stop accepting anyone from Sri Lanka as a refugee. Enough is enough! The war is over, their lives are not in any immediate danger if they ever were.

Saturday, 19 June 2010

The National Post published an opinion piece in which the author fantasizes of a Canada with a population of 100 million. He assumes that a population of that size will be good for Canada because it will increase the nation's reputation on the world stage. Canada will become a major world player instead of the middle power (if that) the country already is. The large domestic market will allow Canadian art and culture to flourish and be exported abroad further increasing Canada's influence beyond it's border as well as prop up Canadian businesses. In short, bigger is better.

The main problem with the piece is that it is based on easily refuted assumptions the prime one being that Canadian's standard of living, and quality of life, will improve. The author cannot guarantee this which is why I turn to Daniel Stoffman's article titled San Paulo of the North: The effects of mass immigration on our cities. In this he describes a not too pleasant picture of what Canada's major urban centers may look like in the foreseeable future. Living in Toronto and witnessing first hand the direction mass immigration is taking the city I happen to side with Daniel Stoffman.

It is not unreasonable to assume that most, if not the vast majority, of Canada's 100 million residents will live in and around the country's five major urban centers (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa). These city's will become increasing unmanageable and unlivable.

The article gives no consideration to social cohesion, or political stability, as growing ethnic communities mature into fully functioning de facto colonies of other nations. No mention is given to pollution, waste removal, the strain on sewer systems, gridlock, urban sprawl, loss of green spaces, farmland and Canada's ability to feed itself, and so on.

As much as we like to think that Canada has a lot of room to spare not much of the country is habitable. How many will want to live in Nunavut or the tundra or anywhere in the Canadian north with its long winters and short growing seasons? Australia provides a suitable comparison. It is a large enough country but most of it is inhospitable desert.

I do not share the dream of a nation of 100 million inhabitants and if I do it is with reservation though I do concede that a population of 100 million is certain at some future date. However, the author wants to achieve this as fast as possible. The question is why? What's the point if Canadians' quality of life cannot be assured? Ask yourself this: has the Canadian standard of living changed at all for the better since the population grew from 25 million to 33 million today?

For one thing, people living in Canada a century ago had a relatively modest environmental impact. Today, in contrast, our ecological footprint and consumption of resources are among the largest in the world. The Science Council of Canada cautioned more than three decades ago that Canada should slow down the growth of its population (then only 24 million -- compared with 34 million today) given such considerations as the fact that our prime agricultural land was limited and that we were one of the most energy-intensive countries in the world due to our hostile climate and energy-dependent lifestyle. The Science Council suggested that the biggest international contribution we could make in terms of consumption of resources was to moderate our population growth and strengthen our position as an exporter of food, services and technologies.

Another important difference is that we now have a generous system of government-funded social benefits that did not exist in Laurier's time. A century ago, immigrants had to make it on their own. If they weren't able to -- and many fell into this category -- they returned to their countries of origin or tried their luck somewhere else. Today, by contrast, even well-educated immigrants often have trouble finding suitable jobs. The average earnings of newcomers are much lower, and poverty levels much higher, than people born in Canada and those immigrants who arrived prior to 1980. This costs Canadian taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year.

It is doubtful, moreover, whether people living in our larger cities would welcome massive population increases. While Studin envisages new cities springing up in the Maritimes, the Prairies and the North, it is not at all clear how this will come about. With the exception of locations where there have been major new natural-resource developments, we have had limited success in creating economic opportunities that lead to significant growth in areas of the country where the population is stagnant or in decline, and there is no reason to expect this situation to change in the future.

In the circumstances, newcomers will continue to settle in places such as Toronto and Vancouver, where residents already have to deal with long commute times and expensive housing and are hardly likely to welcome a tripling of their populations. While some of the megacities of the world make interesting places to visit, they never rate among the most livable for the vast majority of their inhabitants.

Collacott is more correct in his predictions than Studin who losses himself to fantasy and wishful thinking. Demographics and immigrant settlement trends side with Collacott. It is likely that a nation of 100 million will most likely be concentrated in Canada's five major urban centers which is no different than the way it is today. And those major urban centers will likely reflect cities like Sao Paulo, Mumbai, and Johannesburg, interesting places to visit but I doubt you, or Studin, would want to live there.

Thursday, 17 June 2010

I could be a Hungarian-Canadian for the asking, since both countries permit dual citizenship — Canada since the 70s and Hungary since the 90s, I believe — but I wouldn’t dream of asking because I think dual citizenship is a contradiction in terms. I know it’s practiced in a lot of places, but so is polygamy. To me, dual citizenship makes about the same sense.Let me stop here for a second. Some people’s instinct is to outlaw everything that makes no sense to them. I’m not of that ilk. I don’t have to sympathize with every custom, practice, or institution to let others embrace them. I wouldn’t lock up individuals who practice polygamy, never mind dual citizenship. I just want to be able to say they sound dissonant to me. To my ears, dual citizenship strikes a false note.

In this an American writer weighs in on anchor babies. Though his remarks are about the Untied States they can be applied to Canada as well.

In an interview with Business Week, director of NumbersUSA.com, Rob Beck, said, “The U.S. should pass H.R. 1868—the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009—so all babies born on U.S. soil are no longer automatically made citizens.

“Maternity tourism is just the beginning of the silliness of birthright citizenship that goes to the babies of foreign students, temporary foreign workers, international travelers—and the millions who break the law to criminally enter this country.”

[...]

“Each of these babies becomes an anchor who retards deportation of unlawfully present parents—and who eventually will be an anchor for entire families and villages as chain migration leads to the immigration of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

“Birthright citizenship is an antiquated practice that has been abandoned by nearly all wealthy nations and emerging nations (recently India and Indonesia) and by the majority of poor nations.”

The piece makes of note of the fact that not even Mexico allows anchor babies. We do however. The most recent example is when Canada bestowed citizenship on a Ugandan child because he was born in Canadian airspace. How silly is that?

Canadian citizenship should not be automatically given to anyone born on Canadian soil or in Canadian airspace. This should be a right given to the children born in Canada of legal Canadian citizens. Anchor babies are a legal, social, and financial problem. Like the refugee stream it is another way self-selecting immigrants can queue jump and get a foot in the door. It is abuse of Canadian law and denying citizenship to children born to people who are not Canadian citizens should put a stop to it.

I don't know where I stand regarding dual citizenship. In essence I'm opposed to it but there may be benefits to it in practice. But my opposition to it stems from my numerous encounters with people who are Canadian so far as the country provides a lifestyle for them. To them, Canada is a well paying job, a shopping mall, socialized medicine, an urban sprawl home with a two door garage, an SUV for each port. They are Canadian when it means getting something out of it. Otherwise they are somebody else from somewhere else. Of course I am talking about the hyphenated Canadian, a paradoxical moniker being adopted by Canadian born citizens. Which brings me to world cup soccer.

The Maple Leaf might fly instead of the tricolour or cross, perhaps alongside it or maybe it would hardly been seen at all. Judging by the crowd loyalties when Canada has played against other teams, thousands of Canadians regard their true affiliations as being many miles away. In that sport is visceral and tribal and often exposes genuine feelings, this says something deeply worrying about the country.

While the fantasy is of modern Canada being composed of numerous nations, faiths and people who all come together as one, the truth is closer to numerous battling and exclusive groups carving out their own influence and place in a fractured state too nervous and self-critical to be proud in its being and aggressive in its citizenship.

I am reminded of the time many years back when Greece played Canada in an exhibition basketball match in Toronto. Much to the surprise (and annoyance) of the Canadian audience Greece was receiving the greater amount of cheering. Assuming the majority of those in attendance were Canadians then why so much excitement at seeing your country, Canada, get beaten by a visiting team. This is why I happen to agree with Michael Coren.

To understand why is to see why so many "Canadians" were cheering against their country. It is because Canada is no longer perceived to be a country. It's been reshaped into a mere postal code. It's a nice neighbourhood to live in within the world community. This is why it is possible to be Canadian and not Canadian at the same time because the Canadian doesn't exist beyond being described as someone who resides in a particular part of the world. Who you are is where you or your parents came from. To tell someone you are a Canadian is just informing them what geographical region you live in on the world map. Everyone and no one is a Canadian at the same time.

That being the case Canadian customs and traditions have no safeguards to prevent them from drowning in the flood of alien cultures introduced into the county by waves of unassimilating immigrants. Why should they? Multiculturalism argues that just because the Europeans got here first (and established the character of the country) doesn't mean Muslim or Sikh customs, as examples, shouldn't be considered as Canadian as maple syrup. Indeed, isn't that Canada's future (is it nation building or cultural suicide?).

The is the fruit of multiculturalism, of cowardly accommodating the cultural nuances of waves of immigrants who only see Canada through the prism of a sales event at the urban sprawl outlet mall. You don't live in a country. You live in a postal code.

As aside can anyone tell me if there is more to world cup soccer than slow motion replays of people sliding on the grass to rob possession of the ball from an opposing player? Seriously. That and fake dives and injuries. Are they playing soccer or competing for the Oscar for best actor? For a sport rooted in working class culture you'd expect a tougher, manly player but no. I wonder if they check their hands after each game to see if they chipped a nail.

There are nearly twice as many temporary foreign workers in Alberta now as there were at the height of the economic boom.

Newly-released figures from Citizenship and Immigration Canada show that on Dec. 1, 2009, there were 69,000 foreign workers in the province, compared to only 35,000 in 2006.

Alberta’s unemployment rate currently sits at 6.6%.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Terry Andriuk, head of the temporary foreign worker program at Edmonton’s Mennonite Centre for Newcomers.

The head of the Alberta Federation of Labour calls it a “lose-lose situation.”

It’s been a bad deal for the foreigners, says Gil McGowan, because many are forced to work in poor conditions for low pay that no Canadian would accept. Meanwhile, he says, Canadian workers suffer because the steady supply of foreigners allows employers to keep wages low.

Though the report focuses on Alberta the phenomenon is national. Canada is importing more temporary foreign workers than it is permanent residents and even the permanent resident numbers are far too high. Combined one can easily speculate the damage being done to Canadian living standards, especially those of the most vulnerable of Canadian citizens, by making it all the more difficult earn a livable income.

Given the uncertain economic environment we are in and the growth of precarious work we have to ask ourselves why there is a heavy reliance on temporary foreign workers. We also have to ask what the Canadian Labour Congress is doing about it. If Canada's strongest labour unions are about protecting Canadian jobs then why are they silent about Canada's immigration policy which floods the job market with cheap, disposable, superfluous labour?

Sunday, 13 June 2010

I came across this via Free Dominion. Published in the Edmonton Sun, it's about Canada's "sham of a refugee system".

Then there are the people who seek her help to renew their permanent resident cards when they haven’t met the already ridiculously loose requirement that they spend a certain period on Canadian soil.

“They’re panicking because they haven’t spent enough time in Canada,” says Taub. (Permanent residents only have to spend two years in Canada over a five-year period to maintain their PR status.)

Grasping at straws for a way to renew their PR cards, some of her clients plotted to create a fabricated contract of employment with a Canadian employer abroad — a friend of theirs — and then get Taub to prepare the renewal paperwork based on that loophole.

Another popular scam involves permanent residents in the entrepreneur class category who have no intention of setting up a business in Canada. They just want their kids to study for three years at a Canadian university without paying international fees. (Immigrants in the entrepreneur class have three years to start a business here.)

University students have come to Taub pleading for help to extend their PR status so they can study for one more year and finish their degrees without paying the higher fees.

Once she finds out that their parents aren’t in Canada, she shoos the students out the door. “It enrages me because guess who’s subsidizing these foreign kids as technically permanent residents when they shouldn’t be?” Canadian taxpayers, of course.

This later scam is, without a doubt, predominately abused by Chinese citizens. This is mostly a hunch of mine supported by the fact that there are an estimated 300,000 "Canadians" living in Hong Kong right now and that Chinese citizens have a penchant for returning to their homeland once they obtain Canadian citizenship, oftentimes parking their parents and children in Canada in the process. Canadians benefit little from this arrangement with all gains going to the immigrant who abuses the system.

The immigration lawyer interviewed in the article has these solutions to offer:

For instance, Taub believes people should have to be in Canada 80% of the time to retain their permanent resident status. I agree. Right now, many people are using us for our passport and generous social benefits while they live elsewhere most of the time. How does Canada benefit from such a regime?

She also suggests smart cards that could be swiped whenever permanent residents leave or return to Canada to enforce minimum residency requirements. Another great idea.

In addition, Taub proposes that we focus on resettling the refugees most in need — those in refugee camps — instead of spending vast amounts of money processing asylum claims from democratic countries.

Sounds reasonable to me.

It's good to see that there are some immigration lawyers in Canada with scruples. Sadly, I don't think there are enough. Immigration lawyers bare considerable responsibility for the creation of the world's most lax, gullible, unenforceable, costly, over burdened immigration system in the world for which the host society, lawyers aside, enjoy very little benefit. To see how costly and unaffordable the system is we read this at the conclusion of the piece:

Here’s one final shocking detail. The UN Refugee Agency has a $3-billion budget this year to help 34 million refugees and internally displaced people. Canada spends about the same amount yearly on 30,000 to 40,000 refugee claimants.

Yes, folks, we’ve been taken for suckers.

Laugh or cry Canada's immigration system needs a major overhaul on several fronts. It's about bringing integrity back to the system, protecting Canadian sovereignty by enforcing our borders, and bringing dignity back to what it means to be a Canadian citizen. As it is now it advertises to the world that we are a nation of suckers and our country a joke. When you have a system that panders to the lowest common denominator then that is the kind of immigrant Canada will attract.